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What Everyone Should Know About Food Production
How a summer spent volunteering on a German farm transformed my perspective on food and health
“By gaining a firmer grasp on the nature of the Western diet — trying to understand it not only physiologically but also historically and ecologically — we can begin to develop a different way of thinking about food that might point a path out of our predicament.”-Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food
“When you plant lettuce, if it does not grow well, you
don’t blame the lettuce. You look for reasons it is not
doing well.“ — Thich Nhat Hanh
Introduction: the Summer I Spent WWOOFing
One morning about two and a half years ago, while shoveling pig manure into a wheelbarrow in a remote German village (Standorf: population 10), I realized I was the happiest I had been in longer than I could remember. I had quit a consulting job two weeks prior and after a year of churning out deliverables and communicating in non-commital jargon, I was finally doing work I could see the effects of. My trip started from a google search for “farm volunteering internationally,” which led me to the WWOOF (World Wide Opportunities on Organic Farms) website. WWOOF matches volunteers to organic farms around the world that need their skills and…
